HFQ Official Snippet #13

I remember all the discussion over a "fatal wound" for a certain EOC duke in the LAMA snippets. I will happily buy a virtual round at the bar if RFC is not pulling our collective chain. I bet he left his computer whistling happily to himself right after typing this bonus snippet.

USMA74 wrote:I remember all the discussion over a "fatal wound" for a certain EOC duke in the LAMA snippets. I will happily buy a virtual round at the bar if RFC is not pulling our collective chain. I bet he left his computer whistling happily to himself right after typing this bonus snippet.

So any wagers on how long it took him to decide that throw that particular edited snippet out? Not on whether or not he was chuckling evilly - that's a given.

So it's not "no child left behind" anymore it is now "no good character left alive"? Maybe I should give those zombie books that I have never read a chance, less corpses are around.

USMA74 wrote:I remember all the discussion over a "fatal wound" for a certain EOC duke in the LAMA snippets. I will happily buy a virtual round at the bar if RFC is not pulling our collective chain. I bet he left his computer whistling happily to himself right after typing this bonus snippet.

Ah, of course he's pulling our chains...

The poser is which way our chain is being pulled. No fun to play the game if it were easy.

Don

n7axw wrote:

USMA74 wrote:I remember all the discussion over a "fatal wound" for a certain EOC duke in the LAMA snippets. I will happily buy a virtual round at the bar if RFC is not pulling our collective chain. I bet he left his computer whistling happily to himself right after typing this bonus snippet.

Ah, of course he's pulling our chains...

The poser is which way our chain is being pulled. No fun to play the game if it were easy.

Don

Well if it was easy everybody could play - wait - everybody is playing

Hi Drak,

I hope and suspect you guys are right.

L

DrakBibliophile wrote:Nah, the Dallas gimmick would be if the open scene of the book following HFQ revealed that HFQ was just a dream.

Note, in Robert A Heinlein's Citizen Of The Galaxy, the main character wakes up from a dream where the villain was about to have him flogged.

So it's a long standing trick of the trade for authors to have scenes that quickly turn out to be a dream.

Annachie wrote:*quote="DrakBibliophile"*Thirsk wakes up in a cold sweat saying "What a nightmare". *quote*

As Bobby Ewing walks out of the shower in nothing but a towel?

lyonheart wrote:Hi Drak,

I hope and suspect you guys are right.

L

Hi Lyonheart,

You know, I've been reading David's stuff for 20 years and I can't in all honesty say that I find him "tricky." He enjoys giving us the business up on the forums, of course. But although he can build tension with the best in terms of making the reader wonder what is going to happen next, he doesn't deceive his readers into believing one thing when something else is true. That's how I see it anyway.

It's been hillarious watcing the gang exclaim how tricky RFC is and then turn right around and assume they can predict wha's going to happen.

Don

n7axw wrote:

You know, I've been reading David's stuff for 20 years and I can't in all honesty say that I find him "tricky."

Okay, here's a riddle: Q: What is it that's a plant, it grows in your lawn, and it's red? A: I don't know, what? Q: Grass. A: But...grass isn't red. Q: I know; I lied about the red part.

In the riddle we have two guys, Quincy and Abraham. Quincy is trying to surprise Abraham, and Abraham is trying to see through Quincy's deception. However, in riddles of this type Abraham should be able to depend on a certain amount of integrity, and it's this integrity that Quincy violates.

In a similar fashion Mr. Weber wants to surprise his audience, and they should be able to depend on a certain amount of integrity on his part. Mr. Weber has mentioned how difficult this can be to achieve at times. Unlike enemies on a battlefield, Mr. Weber's audience can read the minds of people on both sides of the conflict. That being so, how can Mr. Weber surprise his audience? One thing that he shouldn't do is to tell us the grass is red.

I would suggest that there are a number of ways to achieve surprise, and I would like to mention two. The first being that the audience is not told everything that the character knows. One example of this might be the parachute flares that both Eastshare and Hanth have used to such good effect. The other example is a bromide that has appeared in a number of Mr. Weber's novels. I can't remember the exact wording, but I'll put it this way: surprise is when something you've seen all along turns out to be something other than what you thought it was.

I would agree with your statement, n7axw, because of Mr. Weber's distinct lack of telling his audience that the grass is red.

~Tonto

Tonto Silerheels wrote:n7axw wrote:

You know, I've been reading David's stuff for 20 years and I can't in all honesty say that I find him "tricky."

Okay, here's a riddle: Q: What is it that's a plant, it grows in your lawn, and it's red? A: I don't know, what? Q: Grass. A: But...grass isn't red. Q: I know; I lied about the red part.

In the riddle we have two guys, Quincy and Abraham. Quincy is trying to surprise Abraham, and Abraham is trying to see through Quincy's deception. However, in riddles of this type Abraham should be able to depend on a certain amount of integrity, and it's this integrity that Quincy violates.

In a similar fashion Mr. Weber wants to surprise his audience, and they should be able to depend on a certain amount of integrity on his part. Mr. Weber has mentioned how difficult this can be to achieve at times. Unlike enemies on a battlefield, Mr. Weber's audience can read the minds of people on both sides of the conflict. That being so, how can Mr. Weber surprise his audience? One thing that he shouldn't do is to tell us the grass is red.

I would suggest that there are a number of ways to achieve surprise, and I would like to mention two. The first being that the audience is not told everything that the character knows. One example of this might be the parachute flares that both Eastshare and Hanth have used to such good effect. The other example is a bromide that has appeared in a number of Mr. Weber's novels. I can't remember the exact wording, but I'll put it this way: surprise is when something you've seen all along turns out to be something other than what you thought it was.

I would agree with your statement, n7axw, because of Mr. Weber's distinct lack of telling his audience that the grass is red.

~Tonto

Hi Tonto,

Very nice post, Tonto. You've said it better than I. There is a difference in a plotline between not knowing what is going to happen and building suspense and being told something false. Sometimes though, the distinction gets pretty thin.

Don

Something to think about.

In the random snippets that David Weber has given us (as opposed to regular in-order snippets), has David Weber ever actually shown us the death of a prominent character?

I don't remember him doing so therefore I'm thinking that this "death" is similar to the superhero comics where a character appears to be dead on the last page of an issue only for the character to be alive in the comic issue.